I was out in Kansas recently for a wedding and stumbled across this rare classic candy in a store out there. Yay, I had found a piece of candy history. The Cherry Mash has been made since 1918 and it found mainly in the Midwest. It’s the best selling cherry candy bar in the United States, so it proudly displays the tag line of “America’s Favorite Cherry Flavored Candy Bar”.

The wrapper is eye catching with this limited colors and retro design.

The Cherry mash looks like a giant ball, it’s maybe the size of a raquet ball? It’s little smaller than a tennis ball but much, much bigger than a golf ball. The surface is craggy and lumpy from the chopped peanuts, and the mockolate coating gives a lackluster even coating all around. Split in half, there’s an intensely pink fondant cream with chunks of maraschino cherry in it.

It smells mainly of the peanuts with a nice roasted and salty smell. There’s a little whiff of sweetness with hints of cocoa and coconut too, but it’s all about the nuts here.

The flavor is odd: the cherry center is terribly artificial, with strong cherry flavors that at one moment taste authentic, then the next very medicinal. The coating doesn’t deliver much taste wise other than sweetness and a mild odd olive oily taste ,and the peanuts give a good roasted kick and peanutty flavor with some salt to balance the cherry center. The center is very thick and moist, with a slippery mouth feel with a slight grain to it. The coating is just crumbly and slightly greasy, not very appealing.

After my first few bites, I come to conclude the center isn’t as bad as it first seemed. I really just tastes of maraschino cherry…with both it’s odd combination of real and fake flavors. Something about this really seems old fashioned, with ingredients that, in the past, maybe have tasted authentic and real, but now it’s just shadows what it once was.